The effect of the built environment on bicycle use as travel mode

Abstract

The vitality of human’s living environments, especially in cities, is currently under pressure in terms of traffic density and traffic emission. Dutch National and local governments have initiated working programmes to reach sustainable mobility goals. Cycling in this sense is seen as a means of sustainable transport, which may contribute to less urban congestion, and safer and nicer living environments. Therefore it is important to know which factors influence bicycle use. In travel behaviour research, the built environment is seen as one of the main factors influencing travel mode choice. The density, diversity and design determine the distribution of an individual’s activities (residence, work, shops, schools etc.), but also determine how a person’s activity space and its infrastructure is constructed. This research aims to address the importance of the built environment in terms of travel mode choice, specifically for bicycle use. The design dimension of the built environment perceives special attention, since this dimension is not extensively researched yet. Multiple measures of the built environment’s density, diversity and design are developed and calculated using GIS to indicate the cycling friendliness of a built environment. The results show that higher bicycle use rates are found in dense and diverse built environments. The design dimension poses more challenges to quantify, but the results carefully show that the infrastructural design does influence bicycle use. In general, bicycle use tends to be slightly higher in built environment’s where the infrastructure provides a relatively shorter cycling route than motorized travel route.